Tuesday night was a bitter-sweet celebration. We came together to witness the first black man who will become our president, yet watched in sadness as Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, and California all voted down equal rights for all citizens.

This is not a 4 state issue. This is an issue of equality across America. Stand up and make your voice heard. Visit the main www.jointheimpact.com to learn more.

WE NEED VOLUNTEERS! Now is your chance to be a "community organizer"! We need 3 or 4 dedicated volunteers in each town to contact the clubs and organizations in your area and to print/distribute flyers to get a turnout in your town.

Add a link to this page as your Facebook Statushttp://jointheimpact.wetpaint.com

Welcome to F.A.I.R. (Freedom - Action - Inclusion - Rights)! This group was initiated by the L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center at a Young Activists Forum held November 8th, 2008. Managers of this Google Group are young Los Angeles-based activists who are dedicated to taking the fight for equal rights from the Streets to Strategy following the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Our primary focus is to disseminate information and form a strategic plan for the future of this Civil Rights movement. We hope F.A.I.R. will become a model for others in California and the rest of the USA.

Through this group, we hope to hear your input on how this movement should proceed. We will also post important information and event notices related to LGBT civil rights. Please share your suggestions and get involved!

You may also find more information regarding F.A.I.R. at http://www.justfair.us. Please share with your friends and family who might be interested.Thank you again for your support and check back often for updates!

Thursday, November 06, 2008

ZPD: It's only fair to hate haters. Being a sheep gets you dragged to camps to die. We all learnt that lesson.

FIGHT

THE

HATE!

I approve of non-violent protest when authority wants to identify you as the “other.” The voters who voted with the Mormon & other ‘fundie’ hatemongers were tricked. Time to drag them into the 21st century.

A shot of police headed to the protest around Wilshire and Westwood. Via NBC: "At about 4 p.m., officers closed Wilshire and Westwood boulevards. The march terminated near the intersection, jamming traffic in all directions." It's not clear what's open now, but the LA Times(below) is listing some street closures.

Majority Rule won't work when you're telling kids of Gays they're not as good as other kids.Some Mormon bloodied Jaime Meriwether's nose above earlier.Mormon showing the flag's supposed support of hate confronts protester. Classy.

Hundreds of people protesting on the Westside over the passage of Prop. 8 are causing gridlock in a part of L.A. already famous for bad traffic.

The Times' Tami Abdollah reports that the gridlock is gripping streets around the Westside. She said it took her a half-hour to go a mile. She said most major streets -- including Sepulveda Boulevard, Barrington Avenue and Olympic Boulevard -- are jammed. Side streets around the area are also clogged with cars. There is major congestion through Beverly Hills as well.

Details:

-Portions of Santa Monica Boulevard are closed between Beverly Glen and Westwood boulevards.

-Portions of Westwood Boulevard are also closed north of Santa Monica Boulevard.

-Portions of Ohio Avenue are closed east of Westwood Boulevard.

-The closures have caused major congestion on Wilshire Boulevard, a part of which was closed.

If Jacob Whipple gets what he's hoping for, at least 1,000 Utahans will turn out Friday night to protest the involvement of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in helping pass Proposition 8, a California ballot measure that effectively killed, at least for now, same-sex marriages in that state.

The call for people to gather at 6 p.m. at North Temple and State Street in Salt Lake City is to show solidarity with those protesting in California, Whipple explained. Among those hitting the streets were about 3,000 who gathered Thursday afternoon outside the LDS Temple in Westwood, a neighborhood of Los Angeles, bearing signs including one featuring a photo of a gay couple with the words,"Why is this joy and love so scary," The Los Angeles Times reported.=Protest planned=A protest against LDS Church support for California's Proposition 8 is scheduled for Friday, 6 p.m., at North Temple and State Street in Salt Lake City.

"We want to show we share their pain, and here, at the heart of the church, we want to stab it," said Whipple, of Salt Lake City.

The 29-year-old former LDS Church member, who served a mission in Argentina, was helping to get the word out late Thursday about the Utah protest. He said he and others were seeking support through e-mails, text messages, social networking Web pages and old-fashioned phone calls.

Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Utah Pride Center, said her organization would "absolutely" be there to stand with others.

"We want to show we share their pain, and here, at the heart of the church, we want to stab it," said Whipple, of Salt Lake City.

The 29-year-old former LDS Church member, who served a mission in Argentina, was helping to get the word out late Thursday about the Utah protest. He said he and others were seeking support through e-mails, text messages, social networking Web pages and old-fashioned phone calls.

Valerie Larabee, executive director of the Utah Pride Center, said her organization would "absolutely" be there to stand with others.

"Millions in California, including our friends and families, stood up and voted for equalitywhile the LDS Church stood for discrimination," she said. "Friday's message will be one of hope for steady progress towards equality and fairness - a message everyone can believe in."

The LDS Church got into the thick of the California battle when officials issued statements encouraging members to actively support the ban. All told, Latter-day Saints are estimated to have given, by some counts, as much as $22 million to the effort.

But while many rallied for the cause, other church members have stepped up in protest. The hot issue has created rifts in ward houses and after the initiative passed, a church leader Wednesday called on members to treat one another with "civility, with respect and with love."

Whipple, who is engaged to Drew Cloud, 24, of Orange County, Calif., said the two men - who had planned to marry on April 11, 2009 - will go ahead with their ceremony and celebration, "whether it's recognized or not."

And it's for this reason that he will join the others in circling Temple Square, the international spiritual hub of the LDS Church, as well as the headquarters office building. It'll be part of the journey the returned missionary began when he left LDS Church-owned Brigham Young University after two years of study.

"I gave up on trying to pretend to be straight and started to live my life."

LDS Church officials react to California temple protest

According to a written statement: "The Church acknowledges that such an emotionally charged issue concerning the most personal and cherished aspects of life family and marriage stirs fervent and deep feelings. The Church calls on those involved in the debate over same sex marriage to act in the spirit of mutual respect and civility towards each other. No one on either side of the question should be vilified, intimidated, harassed or subject to erroneous information."

Wednesday, October 22, 2008

Chinese researchers claim they've confirmed the theory behind an "impossible" space drive, and are proceeding to build a demonstration version. If they're right, this might transform the economics of satellites, open up new possibilities for space exploration –- and give the Chinese a decisive military advantage in space.

To say that the "Emdrive" (short for "electromagnetic drive") concept is controversial would be an understatement. According to Roger Shawyer, the British scientist who developed the concept, the drive converts electrical energy into thrust via microwaves, without violating any laws of physics. Many researchers believe otherwise. An article about the Emdrive in New Scientist magazine drew a massive volley of criticism. Scientists not only argued that Shawyer's work was blatantly impossible, and that his reasoning was flawed. They also said the article should never have been published.

"It is well known that Roger Shawyer's 'electromagnetic relativity drive' violates the law of conservation of momentum, making it simply the latest in a long line of 'perpetuum mobiles' that have been proposed and disproved for centuries," wrote John Costella, an Australian physicist. "His analysis is rubbish and his 'drive' impossible."

Shawyer stands by his theoretical work. His company, Satellite Propulsion Research (SPR), has constructed demonstration engines, which he says produce thrust using a tapering resonant cavity filled with microwaves. He is adamant that this is not a perpetual motion machine, and does not violate the law of conservation of momentum because different reference frames apply to the drive and the waves within it. Shawyer's big challenge, he says, has been getting people who will actually look into his claims rather than simply dismissing them.

Such extravagant claims are usually associated with self-taught, backyard inventors claiming Einstein got it all wrong. But Shawyer is a scientist who has worked with radar and communication systems and was a program manager at European space company EADS Astrium; his work rests entirely on Einstein being right. The thrust is the result of a relativistic effect and would not occur under simple Newtonian physics. Many have dismissed his work out of hand, and British government funding has ceased. He has had some interest from both the United States and China. Now the Chinese connection with the Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU) in Xi'an seems to have paid off.

"NPU started their research program in June 2007, under the supervision of Professor Yang Juan. They have independently developed a mathematical simulation which shows unequivocally that a net force can be produced from a simple resonant tapered cavity," Shawyer tells Danger Room. "The thrust levels predicted by this simulation are similar to those resulting from the SPR design software, and the SPR test results."

What's more, Shawyer says, NPU is "currently manufacturing" a "thruster" based on this theoretical work.

The NPU have confirmed that they have reproduced the theoretical work, and are building a demosntration version of the Emdrive.

Needless to say, independent confirmation is a big deal -- though many will want to see it published in a peer-reviewed journal. Even when it is, I doubt the controversy will subside. Prof. Yang has plenty of experience in this type of area, having previously done work on microwave plasma thrusters, which use a resonant cavity to accelerate a plasma jet for propulsion. While the theory behind the Emdrive is very different, the engineering principles of building the hardware are similar. The Chinese should be capable of determining whether the thruster really works or whether the apparent forces are caused by experimental errors.

The thrust produced is small, but significant. Shawyer compares a C-Band Emdrive with the existing NSTAR ion thruster used by NASA. The Emdrive produces 85 mN of thrust compared to 92 for the NSTAR (that's about one-third of an ounce), but the Emdrive only consumes a quarter of the amount of power and weighs less than 7 kilos, compared to over 30 kilos. The biggest difference is in propellant: NSTAR uses 10 grams per hour; the Emdrive uses none. As long as it has an electricity supply, the Emdrive will keep going.

The possibilities are phenomenal: Instead of going out of service when they run out of fuel, satellites would have greatly extended endurance and be able to move around at will. (We wouldn't have to shoot them down because of the risk from toxic fuel either.) Deep space probes could go further, faster –- and stop when they arrive. Shawyer calculates that a solar-powered Emdrive could take a manned mission to Mars in 41 days. Provided it works, of course.

Meanwhile, what about the American interest? Shawyer told me that "the flight thruster program is on hold for the present. [O]nce the U.K. government had provided an export license for a U.S. military application, the major U.S. aerospace company we had been dealing with stopped talking to us. "

The company may have decided that the Emdrive could not work. If they're wrong, China has at least a year's head start in a technology that will dominate space and make previous satellites as obsolete as sailing ships in the age of steam.

Russian spacewalker Oleg Kononenko approaches a Soyuz spacecraft to remove an explosive bolt during a July spacewalk at the international space station. Kononenko and two other space travelers are to ride the Soyuz back down to Earth this week.

INTERACTIVE

Take a virtual VIP tour of NASA's Kennedy Space Center, powered by Photosynth

HOUSTON - Coming back to Earth from space is never routine, but this week's descent of a Soyuz spacecraft with two Russian cosmonauts and a private space traveler from America will be more closely watched than usual — because of two rough rides that came before.

During the previous two Soyuz descents from the international space station, in October 2007 and April 2008, the spacecraft suffered the same type of major anomaly when explosive bolts failed to separate the crew cabin cleanly from other no-longer-needed sections of the vehicle. As a result, in each case, the ship’s landing guidance system switched to a steering mode that dropped the crews far short of their aim points, and far higher accelerations.

With a little added bad luck, such a landing could have killed everybody on board. But for the past few months, Russian space officials have been assuring NASA and the public — as well as the three men who will be inside the descending Soyuz this week — that everything is now under control.

Russian space officials say they solved the problem going forward by making modifications in the spacecraft, starting with the one that was launched this month and will remain attached to the space station until next spring. As for the Soyuz due to come back this week, the Russians say the problem was fixed when an explosive bolt was removed during an emergency spacewalk in July.

Of course, all this assumes that the problem has been correctly identified. And there's the rub.

The supposedly faulty bolt assembly has not yet even been returned to Earth for disassembly and inspection. It will be coming home on the current return mission, and could provide the first real evidence that the theory behind the previous failures (and the justification for the workarounds and repairs) is correct.

The opposing theory — that the proposed failure mode is wrong and that the cause is something else — could be proved as soon as Thursday night if a similar anomaly occurs. Russian cosmonauts Sergei Volkov and Oleg Kononenko, along with American video-game millionaire Richard Garriott, are due to land at 11:36 p.m. ET Thursday (which is midmorning on the following day in the Kazakh landing zone). NASA TV will carry the entire landing sequence live on the Internet.

It’s not hard to imagine scenarios even worse than the previous two hard landings. In some, the falling spacecraft becomes wrapped in flames before it has correctly aligned its heat shield frontward, leading to fiery penetration of its hull. In other scenarios, critical landing systems such as the parachutes are disabled by thermal stresses and fail to slow the ship for its final touchdown. Such possibilities should be answered with the kinds of solid reassurances that have been lacking. Until now.

A theory you can believe inA more complete explanation behind the Russian theory came out this week from a NASA space official in Houston. The official requested that his name not be used because he was not authorized to divulge the information. His expertise is well-known, however, and he is highly trustworthy.

The explanation made more sense to me — and relieved a lot more anxiety — than all the public reassurances that have come out over the past six months.

According to this source, the anomalies were caused by a combination of electrical phenomena in space and some hardware features of the Soyuz. It is well-documented that the space station plows through a field of charged particles on the edge of the upper atmosphere as well as Earth’s own magnetic field.

Slide show

Month in SpaceClick through the highlights from September’s outer-space imagery, including glittering galaxies as well as Earth’s hurricanes viewed from on high.

more photos

The space station is equipped with an ion gun to neutralize any charge buildup, but the metallic insulation blanket over this particular bolt, and the nearby hardware designed to hold the craft’s aerodynamic protective shroud during launch, were not grounded.

The source said this “allowed a low-level current to flow through the pyro bolts over a long period of time.” The electrical current induced heating. Even in zero gravity, the bolt’s powder fused and shriveled away from the "flash wire" that is supposed to ignite it when commanded. As a result, when the command was issued, the powder did not ignite.

Under terrestrial conditions, he said, “the Russians did reproduce this phenomenon with a simulated environment and a ‘training bolt,’” but not with a flight-qualified bolt. That probably was close enough.

Coincidentally, the bolt that was susceptible to the electrical effect was the only one that spacewalking cosmonauts could access last summer using existing transfer equipment. By removing the bolt at that time, they guaranteed that it would not "hang up" even if it failed to fire this time. This hangup had twice jerked the modules into a brief uncontrolled tumble before they tore loose in the rising flames of re-entry and then, just in time, properly turned the heat shield into those flames.

Adding a flurry of fixesThere was not enough timely insight to add any sensors to the returning Soyuz, to tell the crew that the bolts have indeed fired correctly. However, the expected velocity changes from a nominal separation have been calculated, and the crew will be monitoring their own navigation system to report these changes — or their absence — within several seconds of the required time of separation, the source said. All subsequent Soyuz vehicles, including the one just launched, have thermal sensors on the bolts that will tell ground controllers whether or not the bolts have fired properly.

In addition, the Soyuz will have a software patch, not further described, “that will help the vehicle separate due to atmospheric heating if the pyro lock fails to open,” the source said. But as with any such fast fixes for complex applications, there is always some anxiety that the fix itself may introduce new failure modes.

From here on out, the Soyuz craft will have better electrical grounding, sturdier explosive bolts and rerouted circuitry for the bolt-firing mechanism.

And just to make sure, a task has been added to a scheduled spacewalk in December to install instrumentation near the Soyuz parking ports, in order to measure the electrical environment more precisely. By then, the returned bolt will have been inspected and compared to the test bolt that was subjected to similar electrical effects in the laboratory.

If the theory is actually verified, this anomaly can be retired, joining a long list of "spaceflight funnies" that have bedeviled space missions for decades. And the Russian space teams can clear the decks for the next "funny" waiting out there. That these continue to occur is no surprise. The only really scary outcome is if they stop being solved.

Thursday night, we’ll get a new data point.

NBC News space analyst James Oberg spent 22 years at NASA's Johnson Space Center as a Mission Control operator and an orbital designer.

The remote sensing satellite weighs 1,308 kilograms (2,884 lb) (590 kilograms (1,301 lb) initial orbit mass and 504 kilograms (1,111 lb) dry mass) and carries high resolution remote sensing equipment for visible, near infrared, soft and hard X-ray frequencies. Over a two-year period, it is intended to survey the lunar surface to produce a complete map of its chemical characteristics and 3-dimensional topography. The polar regions are of special interest, as they might contain water ice.[1]

The spacecraft was successfully launched on 22 October 2008 at 6:22 am Indian Standard Time (00:52 UTC).[2] After the spacecraft reaches its lunar transfer orbit, it will take 5.5 days to reach the Moon.[3] They estimate the cost to be Rs. 3.86 billion (US$ 80 million).

The mission includes five ISRO payloads and six payloads from other international space agencies such as NASA and ESA, and the Bulgarian Aerospace Agency, which is being carried free of cost.[4]

Mission objectives

To launch and orbit a spacecraft in lunar polar orbit and conduct scientific studies.

To carry out high resolution mapping of topographic features in 3D, distribution of various minerals and elemental chemical species including radioactive nuclides covering the entire lunar surface using a set of remote sensing payloads. The new set of data would help in unraveling mysteries about the origin and evolution of the Solar System in general and that of the Moon in particular, including its composition and mineralogy.

Realise the mission goal of harnessing the science payloads, lunar craft and the launch vehicle with suitable ground support system including DSN station, integration and testing, launching and achieving lunar orbit of ~100 km, in-orbit operation of experiments, communication/telecommand, telemetry data reception, quick look data and archival for scientific utilisation by identified group of scientists.

Specifications

After full integration, the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft (left) is seen being loaded into the Thermovac Chamber (right)

Mass

1380 kg at launch, 675 kg at lunar orbit,[5] and 523 kg after releasing the impactor.

The spacecraft is mainly powered by its solar array, which includes one solar panel covering a total area of 2.15 x 1.8 m2 generating 700W of power, which is stored in a 36 AhLithium-ion battery.[6] The spacecraft uses a bipropellant integrated propulsion system to reach lunar orbit as well as orbit and attitude maintenance while orbiting the Moon.[5]

Specific areas of study

High-resolution mineralogical and chemical imaging of permanently shadowed north and south polar regions.

Search for surface or sub-surface water-ice on the Moon, specially at lunar poles.

Identification of chemical end members of lunar high land rocks.

Chemical stratigraphy of lunar crust by remote sensing of central upland of large lunar craters, South Pole Aitken Region (SPAR) etc., where interior material may be expected.

To map the height variation of the lunar surface features along the satellite track.

Observation of X-ray spectrum greater than 10 keV and stereographic coverage of most of the Moon's surface with 5m resolution

To provide new insights in understanding the Moon's origin and evolution.

Chandrayaan 1

The scientific payload has a total mass of 90 kg and contains six Indian instruments and six foreign instruments.

The Terrain Mapping Camera (TMC) has 5 m resolution and a 40 km swath in the panchromatic band and will be used to produce a high-resolution map of the Moon.[7]

The Hyper Spectral Imager (HySI) will perform mineralogical mapping in the 400-900 nm band with a spectral resolution of 15 nm and a spatial resolution of 80 m.

An X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (C1XS) covering 1- 10 keV with a ground resolution of 25 km and a Solar X-ray Monitor (XSM) to detect solar flux in the 1–10 keV range.[8] C1XS will be used to map the abundance of Mg, Al, Si, Ca, Ti, and Fe at the surface, and will monitor the solar flux. This payload is a collaboration between Rutherford Appleton laboratory, U.K, ESA and ISRO.

Moon Impact probe (MIP) developed by the ISRO, is a small satellite that will be carried by Chandrayaan-1 and will be ejected once it reaches 100 km orbit around Moon, to impact on the Moon. MIP carries three more instruments, namely, a high resolution mass spectrometer, an S-Band altimeter and a video camera. The MIP also carries with it a picture of the Indian flag, its presence marking as only the fourth nation to place a flag on the Moon after Russia (however, Luna 2 carried the Soviet flag and coat of arms), United States and Japan.[9]

Among foreign payloads, The Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyser (SARA) from the ESA will map composition using low energy neutral atoms sputtered from the surface.[10]

S-band miniSAR, designed, built and tested for NASA by a large team that includes the Naval Air Warfare Center, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman; it is the active SAR system to search for lunar polar ice. The instrument will transmit right polarized radiation with a frequency of 2.5 GHz and will monitor the scattered left and right polarised radiation. The Fresnel reflectivity and the circular polarisation ratio (CPR) are the key parameters deduced from these measurements. Ice shows the Coherent Backscatter Opposition Effect which results in an enhancement of reflections and CPR, so that water content of the Moon polar region can be estimated.[12]

Radiation Dose Monitor (RADOM-7) from Bulgaria is to map the radiation environment around the Moon.

Space flight

Launch took place 22 October 2008 at 6.22 am IST from Satish Dhawan Space Centre using ISRO's PSLV launch rocket. The rocket 44.4 metre tall four-stage rocket is supposed to launch the spacecraft into orbit. Chandrayaan will take 15 days to reach the lunar orbit. ISRO's telemetry, tracking and command network (ISTRAC) at Peenya in Bangalore, will be tracking and controlling Chandrayaan-1 over the next two years of its life span.[13]

Since its perfect launch, Chandrayaan has performed several engine burns, moving it into the designated Geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) around earth and has successfully communicated with base center.

Once in GTO, Chandrayaan's on-board motor will be fired to take it to the lunar orbit with 1,019 km perigee and 386,194 km apogee from the Earth around November 8. This orbit will take the spacecraft to the vicinity of the moon.

The spacecraft will rotate for about five-and-a-half days before firing the engine to slow its velocity for moon's gravity to capture it.[14] As the spacecraft approaches the moon, its speed will be reduced to enable the gravity of the moon to capture it into an elliptical orbit.[15] A series of engine burns will then lower its orbit to its intended 100 km circular polar orbit. Following this, the Moon Impact Probe (MIP) will be ejected from Chandrayaan-1 and all the scientific instruments/payloads are commissioned.[14]

Chandrayaan II

The ISRO is also planning a second version of Chandrayaan named: Chandrayaan II. According to ISRO Chairman G. Madhavan Nair, "The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) hopes to land a motorised rover on the Moon in 2010 or 2011, as a part of its second Chandrayaan mission. The rover will be designed to move on wheels on the lunar surface, pick up samples of soil or rocks, do in situ chemical analysis and send the data to the mother-spacecraft Chandrayaan II, which will be orbiting above. Chandrayaan II will transmit the data to Earth."

Chandrayaan II will consist of the spacecraft itself and a landing platform with the Moon rover. The platform with the rover will detach from the orbiter after the spacecraft reaches its orbit above the Moon, and land on lunar soil. Then the rover will roll out of the platform. Mylswamy Annadurai, Project Director, Chandrayaan I, said: "Chandrayaan II will carry a semi-hard or soft-landing system. A motorised rover will be released on the Moon's surface from the lander. The location for the lander will be identified using Chandrayaan I data."

The rover will weigh between 30 kg and 100 kg, depending on whether it is to do a semi-hard landing or soft landing. The rover will have an operating life-span of one month. It will run predominantly on solar power.

NASA Lunar Outpost

According to Ben Bussey, senior staff scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, Chandrayaan's imagery will be used to decide the future Lunar outpost that NASA has recently announced. Bussey told SPACE.com, "India's Chandrayaan-1 lunar orbiter has a good shot at further identifying possible water ice-laden spots with a US-provided low-power imaging radar." Bussey advised - one of two US experiments on the Indian Moon probe. "The idea is that we find regions of interest with Chandrayaan-1 radar. We would investigate those using all the capabilities of the radar on NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter", Bussey added, "a Moon probe to be launched late in 2008."[17] (The LRO is now scheduled for launch 24 April 2009).